Kaveh Rajab Khalilpour

My research, in line with the global sustainability efforts, is towards finding engineering solutions for closing the carbon cycle. Over billions of years, the Earth had developed an almost closed biogeochemical cycle with the atmosphere and its above. Human, however, opened this cycle within just a century. This occurred in several ways especially by releasing burried carbons (in fossil form) for energy, and reducing carbon sinks (deforestation) for food and other needs.
So far, the collective international efforts for closing carbon cycle have led to three key technological approaches including energy efficiency, renewable energies, and carbon capture, storage, and utilization. In my research, I employ decision analysis and optimisation algorithms to tackle problems in these three directions.
More specifically, my current key research focus is to find innovative approaches for:
(1) Renewable energy (and) storage: Optimal management of energy systems with intermittent renewable energy resources, which are un/available at un/wanted times.
(2) New pathways of carbon dioxide utilization, considering the fact that carbon storage has very limited opportunity for value proposition.
(3) Whole of system thinking: As Albert Einstein once said “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Energy sustainability is tightly linked with food and water, the other two necessities of life. It should also comply with the society-economy-environment constraints. This necessitates the energy-food-water-society-economy-environment nexus analysis in any sustainable technology development.

Experience

–present

Senior Research Fellow, Caulfield School of Information Technology, Monash University